Afghan H-bomb: Record opium harvest, billions burn in 'war on drugs'

Afghan policemen count bags containing heroin as they are presented to the media at a police station in Jalalabad on September 19, 2013. (AFP Photo / Noorullah Shirzada) / AFP

Finding a solution to the thriving heroin production in Afghanistan has been on the back burner ever since the Americans occupied the country. The new Afghan president who will be elected next weekend will have to battle record opium harvests.

Since the US came down on the Taliban and occupied Afghanistan in
2001, heroin production in the country has surged almost 40-fold.
One year ago the estimated number of heroin addicts dying due to
Afghan heroin in the preceding decade surpassed well over one
million deaths worldwide.

Last year, Afghanistan harvested a record quantity of opium. The annual report of the
International Narcotics Control Board maintains that Afghan poppy
fields now occupy a record 209,000 hectares, a 36 percent
increase from 2013.

Today more than half of the provinces in Afghanistan are growing
opium poppies. Reports say Afghanistan is responsible for
production of around 80 percent of the world's opium and heroin.

Heroin takes toll on Afghan society

Yet the country’s probably most disastrous problem is that the
Afghan people not only produce record amounts of opiates, they
are actively consuming them, with a heroin vortex sucking in more
Afghanis every year.

According to the UN, 1 in 30 Afghani is a drug addict – that’s
over a million people in a 30-million population. This makes
Afghanistan not just the main producer, but at the same time one
of the world’s leading drug consumers.

The new Afghan president will have to find ways to save his
people from domestically produced drugs, which also form the
backbone
of the national economy.

Despite declaring war on drugs in Afghanistan, all efforts to
disrupt the production of heroin have not helped to solve the
problem in the slightest, with more drugs flowing out of the
country every year. Earnings from the trade are clearly
considered worth the risks. And Afghan heroin is spreading in all
directions, and in
particular – Russia.

Because the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headed
by the US remains the dominant power in Afghanistan for the
second decade now, Russia has been repeatedly
asking Washington to curb heroin production in the Afghan
mountains, albeit with poor
results.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin blamed
the ISF for doing almost nothing to eradicate drug production in
the occupied country. At the same time the US maintains that
since 2002 it has spent $7 billion on fighting drug production in
Afghanistan, and allocated $3 billion on agricultural programs
trying to encourage Afghan nationals to grow other crops in place
of the opium poppy.

In 2014 things deteriorated with the escalation of the political
crisis in Ukraine and the Russia-US row over Crimea separating
from Ukraine to reunite with Russia.

The US introduced
sanctions against Russia and a number of its officials, thus
breaking many contacts established over the years.

The new blacklist included the head of the Russian Federal Drug
Control Service, Viktor Ivanov, who also co-chairs the Russia-US
Presidential Commission workgroup on countering the illegal drug
trade. Russia’s anti-drug tsar accused Washington of attempting
to hide its
responsibility for the drug crisis in Afghanistan.

NATO has also announced that it is suspending
all military and civilian cooperation with Russia over the
Ukrainian crisis.

On Wednesday news came that NATO is giving up its joint program
with Russia, which is currently teaching Afghan helicopter
pilots. Washington also intends not to buy original spare parts
for Russian-made helicopters used by the Afghan army.

Although NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced
that the alliance will continue cooperating with Russia in
countering drugs in Afghanistan, the real future for such
cooperation looks grim, particularly after the US President’s
deputy drug czar, Michael Botticelli, refused an
invitation by his Russian colleague to come to Moscow, citing
Russia’s actions in Crimea as the major reason.

The lack of international dialogue could allow this business to
grow even further, Dr. Bidit Dey, an expert on Afghanistan from
the University of Northumbria told RT.

“The West, and of course the US in particular, have to set
aside all geopolitical interests when it comes to global
security,” Bidit Dey said, stressing that “There is a
lack of cooperation between Russia and the West and that would be
a huge threat to Europe’s security and also to overall social
stability.”

While Washington is trying to avoid shouldering the
responsibility for allowing heroin production in Afghanistan to
burgeon, there is growing
agreement that this deadly business simply can't go on
forever.

With the presidential election set in Afghanistan for April 5 and
the American troops expected to leave the country by the end of
2014, does the world stand a chance for a real change?